the awesomest kid

Yesterday was the homecoming dance at my school, which I had the pleasure of chaperoning for 3 hours. Mostly, I amused myself at how well or awful my students dance. They dance to Mexican/Tejano music as easily as they do pop music. The Kumbia Kings caused as much excitement as Justin Timberlake. I was never remotely excited about Indian music; it makes me happy that my students love their own and mainstream American culture together.

Either way, my point in writing is to tell you about the most awesomest kid.

I stood to the back of the cafeteria for most of the dance, leaning up against a half-wall thing because my feet hurt. At some point, I heard a kid talking behind me. I turned, and he was just there alone, hopping around animatedly. I turned back around, pointed out to a co-worker/friend that the kid behind us was talking to himself and we laughed.

A while later, I felt someone tapping my back. It was the kid, and he was asking me to move over a bit and bending over to get something at my feet. I was standing on one of those plasticy strings that holds up balloons. Balloons had been popped and deflated all over the place; so, of course, those strings were littered all over the floor. He reached for the one I was standing on and I asked him what he was doing.

"I'm making the longest rope," he replied.

He had, in his hand, a half-deflated balloon, tied to a string tied to a string tied to a string. He tied the string I was standing on to it, and walked away, half-deflated balloon trailing behind him. I turned around and heard him saying, "Awesome. This is awesome. Awesome..."

I'm not sure that I love teaching because I'm helping fix the achievement gap. But I know I love teaching because I get to work with the most random people ever.

oh, and I forgot to mention

The story's called Best Friend to Worst Enemy. The tiger's shift from best to worst actually never happens in the story, because I ended the story before then. Oops.

BUT I STILL WON

Young Author

In third or second grade, I was a proud recipient of the prestigious Young Author's Award, which maybe a zillion other kids also received in the state of Wisconsin. I found the winning piece today, in a box of old stuff. I had an excellent time re-reading what is clearly the first major stepping stone towards what will hopefully be a long, successful career writing.

The story's main character is a lion, Raja, who live in a jungle in Delhi, which I subsequently learned is actually kind of sort of full of humans and not jungle.

Here are some excerpts, a preview of what will maybe someday be published in full in my Collected Works:

One rainy, rainy day Raja heard some thumping coming toward him. He jumped up and growled.

Then the thing that was thumping said "It is okay," in a crying voice, "It is only me, Share (Raja's BFF, a tiger). I have some very bad news, but you have to promise not to ry."

"Me? Cry?," he answered. "I'm a full grown lion."
...
"Our parents, even mine, have died because they got sucked up by quick sand."

The reader then learns the parents were chased into the quicksand by two evil snakes. I remember pretty distinctly knowing the parents needed to die, and being unwilling to give them a more violent ending than quick sand. Either way, that night, Raja hardly ate dinner, "even though it was his favorite food, deer meat."

After Raja's announcement that he is now king of the jungle

... an elephant came to their house and asked for Raja...

"I heard how your parents died.," said the elepahnt, "Do you think you need a guard? Because I can be yours."

Well why," asked Raja, "I'm not trying to be mean or any thing but I just want to know.

That sentence is probably the only one without proper use of quotation marks. When I was in a creative writing class at Tulane, we had to review quotation marks because some of my classmates didn't get how to do dialouge. Major props to my elementary teachers for having covered that so well! (Oh, and the elephant's parents were sucked up by quicksand--because of the snakes--in case you're wondering why he offered to protect the lions.)

Either way, I apparently didn't have time to finish writing the story, because the narrator ends the story with (Yes! There is a narrator! I must have read some Kipling around when I wrote this, because I seemed to have imitated his narrative voice.) this:

Now you will have to figure the rest out yourself because I do not remember the rest.


Awesome. I'm kind of awesome. I really hate sharing my writing with people (like, non-blog writing, of course); but if you come over and ask about my writing, I will let you read the whole thing!!!